The Montessori School in Erding, near Munich, uses a very low amount of energy to heat because it is constructed to Passive House standards. Preconditioning the fresh ventilation air is one way the building achieves this high level of energy efficiency. The two ducts shown in the third picture above bring in preconditioned fresh air through earth tubes. While earth tubes use modern technology such as antimicrobial nano-silver coatings, the basic idea is nothing new. In Pecos, New Mexico the underground circular kiva ceremonial rooms used passive earth tube ventilation hundreds of years ago to provide fresh air.

Building owners should run ventilation air continuously through earth tubes to avoid mold growth. In Europe, where earth tubes are relatively common, there have not been significant problems with mold. However, many people in the United States are concerned that higher humidity—outside the Southwest, of course—could lead to mold problems if the earth tubes are not properly maintained.

Fortunately for owners in New York, earth tubes are not necessary to achieve the Passive House standard. Good insulation, air tightness, high-performance windows, and the proper orientation are enough.

Email architect@gduncan.us to learn more about building to the Passive House standard.

For a grid-tied net-zero-energy building, this is about offsetting the energy consumed with energy produced by renewable, emissions-free means. Why not offset by purchasing renewable energy or just buying carbon offsets? This could be called a Net-Zero Off-Site Energy Building. While there is no standard or third-party verification system for net zero energy, the four most common definitions do not allow offsets for off-site renewable energy. A 2006 paper (PDF) by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory explains these definitions in detail.

Net Zero Site Energy: A site ZEB produces at least as much energy as it uses in a year, when accounted for at the site.

Net Zero Source Energy: A source ZEB produces at least as much energy as it uses in a year, when accounted for at the source. Source energy refers to the primary energy used to generate and deliver the energy to the site. To calculate a building’s total source energy, imported and exported energy is multiplied by the appropriate site-to-source conversion multipliers.

Net Zero Energy Costs: In a cost ZEB, the amount of money the utility pays the building owner for the energy the building exports to the grid is at least equal to the amount the owner pays the utility for the energy services and energy used over the year.

Net Zero Energy Emissions: A net-zero emissions building produces at least as much emissions-free renewable energy as it uses from emissions-producing energy sources.

One design implication of a site ZEB is that this definition favors electric equipment that is more efficient at the site than its gas counterpart. Using the site ZEB definition, a 95% efficient gas boiler consumes 1053 kWh to produce 1000 kWh [3412 BTU] of heat, while an air-source heat pump with a coefficient of performance of 2.85 only consumes 351 kWh to produce the same amount of heat. However, using the source ZEB definition, the two are equivalent. 1000 kWh of heat requires 1158 kWh of source energy in both cases, assuming a source-energy factor of 3.3 for electric and 1.1 for natural gas.

The NREL paper ignores the embodied energy required to produce photovoltaic and solar thermal equipment. The source energy factor for PV including embodied energy is 0.7 according to the standards used by the Passive House Institute. Additional source energy factors per PHI are 2.7 for electric, 1.1 for gas, and 0.2 for wood. The PHI factor for electric is lower than the US average because it is based on the average for Europe, which uses less coal than the US. Determining the correct source energy factor can be difficult. For instance, in New York, should the factor be based on a state-wide average or on average for the entire Eastern US/Canada power grid?

HOK and The Weidt Group designed the Net Zero Court project to be Net Zero Energy Emissions and therefore carbon neutral. The office building still has an estimated energy bill of $0.01/SF so it is not Net Zero Energy Cost. In St. Louis, where the project is located, 81% of electricity comes from coal, so a carbon-neutral building would have a large impact. Their design methodology parallels that of Passive House.

Start with optimizing the building orientation and thermal envelope to improve energy efficiency.

Then use efficient mechanical systems.

Finally, offset the remaining emissions with on-site renewable energy. In this case, with a large four-story structure, they had to rely on PV panels in the parking lot as well as on the roof in order to produce enough electricity to balance that used by the building.

Off-grid buildings—also called energy autarkic buildings—use more total energy over 80 years because of the embodied energy for the PV and batteries which must be replaced every 30 years on average. [source]

A building constructed to Passive House standards can be a Net Zero Energy Emissions building by adding photovoltaic arrays or a wind turbine. The Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) software provides a tool to calculate what is required for carbon neutrality. All other things being equal, the Passive House building will cost less to operate.

http://duncanarchitectpllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/DuncanArchitectPLLC-logo-medium4.png00duncanadminhttp://duncanarchitectpllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/DuncanArchitectPLLC-logo-medium4.pngduncanadmin2011-04-10 22:43:302014-08-15 10:38:20Net Zero Energy and the Passive House Standard

How do you design a building that is quiet, comfortable, and costs substantially less to operate?

One tool is an energy-modeling software called the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) developed by a German physicist, Dr. Wolfgang Feist. He developed the software as a relatively easy way to determine compliance with the Passive House construction standard for low-energy buildings. The PHPP model for the first Passive House–a townhouse development in Kranichstein, Germany, near Frankfurt–is included with the software. It is easy to change the location of the project using the provided climate data sets. I “moved” the building to New York City to see what modifications to the building envelope would be required. It turns out that it is much easier to build a Passive House in New York than in Central Europe.

I made a few changes to the energy model.

First of all it seemed unrealistic to expect New Yorkers to use a clothesline to dry their clothes, so I included an electric condensing dryer. Maybe it would be even more realistic to omit the washer and dryer entirely, since most New York apartments don’t have them. But, let’s give the imaginary tenants the city luxuries of a washer/dryer and even a dishwasher.

Second, I added air-conditioning. I know there are hippies crying right now that we should just suffer through the summer in order to save Gaia. When it is 90 F/ 32 C and 90% humidity at night, I don’t care about the environment, I want my A/C.

Third, because of the A/C, I decided to change the heat source from a boiler to a mini-split heat pump. That way, one piece of equipment can provide heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. These units are common in penthouse retrofits in the city. They are also much quieter than window A/C units or through-wall PTAC units.

Fourth, I changed the heat recovery ventilator (HRV) to a model that is available from a US distributor and changed the energy model assumption that tenants would open windows at night for cooling. Even when we get cool summer nights, it is often impossible to leave the windows open because of street noise. It turns out that the efficiency of HRV’s has increased since 1991. Instead of 83% heat recovery efficiency, you can now get 92%.

Then, I eliminated the earth tube sub-soil heat exchanger. These are very common in Europe, but many Americans are skeptical about the potential for mold growing in the underground air-supply pipes. Until there are some examples of earth tubes successfully installed in New York, I will hold off on assuming that developers or homeowners will want to use this technology. Although if you want to be the first, I’ll be more than willing to work with you.

[update] I also changed the building from a corner to a mid-block location with shared walls on both sides. This is a much more common situation in New York.

Finally, I drastically reduced the amount of insulation. Instead of relying on rules of thumb or guesswork, the architect can use the PHPP energy-modeling software to determine exactly how much insulation is required for the specific building. In this case, because New York gets a lot more sun and has milder temperatures, a lot less insulation is required. The urban density of the city which makes shared walls more common also significantly reduces the heating and cooling loads.

With substantially less insulation, this hypothetical NYC building uses less than the Passive House limit of 15 kWh/m2a for heat and is below the same threshold for cooling, at 9 kWh/m2a. The electricity use is higher than in the Kranichstein example because of the clothes dryer and the heat pump. This building uses 83 kWh/m2a source energy (called primary energy in PHPP). This is still below the Passive House limit of 120 kWh/m2a.
Total energy cost for the apartment is about $1250 per year for electricity and $50 per year for gas. That’s $108/month for all of the electric, heat, and hot water in a 2,000 SF apartment.

Given the low utility costs, a developer could easily include heat AND air-conditioning in the rent as a way to distinguish the building in the market.

I just registered for the 15th annual International Passive House Conference, to be held in Innsbruck, Austria on May 27 and 28. Conference organizers expect over 1,000 participants from all over the world. I hope to get some good tips on energy efficiency and share some of the challenges of building in New York City. I’m also excited to tour a large residential project in Tyrol.

New York Passive House (NYPH) is hosting an event on March 15, 2011. Jotte Seghers will present some Passive House projects he has worked on in Belgium including a multifamily apartment building, a school, and an entire neighborhood. For those who are new to the green building standard, I will present “Passive House 101” with a focus on insulation.

The Passive House standard is growing quickly in New York. NYPH was founded in 2010 and now lists 15 projects on its website.

A recent study of Passive House homes in Germany showed that these houses cost 95% less to heat than typical older buildings. The article is in German, but here is a link to it via Google Translate.

Gregory Duncan is now listed on the PHIUS website as a Certified Passive House Consultant. As an architect who is passionate about green design, I am excited to have this official recognition of my qualifications.

I’ll be attending the 15th Annual International Passive House Conference in May. This year the focus is on regional responses to the challenge of designing and constructing buildings that require very little energy to operate.

Naturally, climatic conditions and architectural traditions differ between regions. There is no clearly defined solution for all locations nor does the Passive House Standard claim to provide such a solution. Instead, the Passive House Standard provides the means for designing buildings most suited to their respective climatic, architectural and cultural conditions. —Wolfgang Feist

UPDATE 2011-06-29: I am now also officially recognized by the international Passive House Institute (PHI) as a Certified Passive House Designer – Architect. PHI uses the term Certified Passive House Designer to recognize design professionals–such as architects–who are also Certified Passive House Consultants.

Comparison of measured consumption (statistical data) with the PHPP calculation.It is only possible to compare average measured results from sufficiently large statistical samplesbecause individual consumption values fluctuate too much on account of the different user behaviours.The average values match the PHPP results exactly.

How accurate is building energy modeling software? There are a lot of assumptions that go into any model. We assume that the weather will conform to historical climate data, that occupants will use the building in a typical manner, that the building is actually constructed as designed, that mechanical equipment will perform as advertised, etc. The chart above shows measured data—blue bars—plotted against the simulation results for Passive House and low-energy buildings in Germany. This shows how well the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) software can predict average energy use. PHPP has been validated with dynamic energy simulation tools as well as with measured data. You can read the US Department of Energy evaluation of PHPP here.

PHPP version 9, which is slated for release towards the middle or end of 2014, will feature two additional worksheets entitled Variants and Comparison along with other innovations. The Variants sheet gives users the option of inputting different designs and displaying the results in parallel. The Compare sheet allows two of these variants to be selected to compare their energy demand and affordability in depth. [Passipedia]

Another tool, the PHeco external calculation tool (not integrated into the PHPP) has been developed by the working group for cost-efficient Passive Houses [AKKP42 2012]. This worksheet uses the PHPP’s findings to calculate affordability. It does so by comparing different building designs’ heating energy demand and the costs of their respective energy-saving measures. The PHI can provide this tool on request. [Passipedia]

Duncan Architect consults with architects, engineers, and contractors to provide energy modeling services, among others. As a Certified Passive House Designer, Gregory Duncan is well qualified to create accurate energy models using PHPP software.

Passive House is a standard for ultra-energy-efficient, healthy, and comfortable buildings. Over 20,000 Passive House buildings, including offices, single-family houses, apartment buildings, and schools, have been constructed around the world. The standard offers a scientific approach to green building that is backed up by real-world data. Compared to typical buildings in the US, a Passive House building uses about 90% less heating and cooling energy. This dramatic reduction in energy use makes it feasible to add photovoltaics to create a net-zero or positive energy building.

Power Tower photo from Wikimedia

The Power Tower in Linz, Austria, is a 74-meter tall office building built to Passive House standards.

Urban Green Expo in New York will feature an educational program titled “The Active State of Passive House: European Perspectives on Implementation in North America” in September, 2010.